Today was probably the most delicious day yet. We ventured once again across the continental divide to visit a banana and pineapple plantation. Here, we learned all about the growing, harvesting, and exporting process behind these fruits and got to try a lot of different foods made with them.

There are several differences between the supply chain of these fruits and coffee. For one, these fruits have a much simpler production process than coffee. While coffee had several steps involved between harvesting and exportation, these fruits do not. However, getting these crops to the store is no easy process, and there are still multiple steps involved.

These plantations obviously value sustainability very much. Both were organic, meaning they don’t use chemicals on their plants. Rather, they find natural solutions for their issues. This approach makes fighting off things such as viruses, animals, and bugs much harder, but these plantations have found a way to succeed. For example, one big threat they face is viruses. To lessen the threat, they make sure to grow more than one type of crop so all of their income isn’t relying on one plant. Because of this, if a disease reaches a plant they will still have other plants that are alive.

It’s hard to say what type of plantation I would like to work on. I love all three of these foods, and all are extremely difficult. However, I would probably pick coffee because I could not imagine working all day in the humidity of the Carribean side. However, the heat might be worth the sacrifice if it meant that I could eat fresh pineapple and sip on freshly-made pina coladas all day.